Lockdown luxury

The last few weeks have made me feel as if I need to be a bit abstemious in my baking. I’m not saying that it’s made me feel I need to bake any less, quite the opposite in fact, but what it has done is made me feel I need to be careful with what I’m using. As a result there’s been lots of sensible, practical baking but not a great deal of luxury and indulgence. That was until a couple of days ago when I finally gave in to my sweet tooth and baked what I like to think of as a weekend cake.

The plan started to form on Friday. I’d gone on a shopping expedition to our local supermarket, armed with a list of all the essentials we needed. It was when I was at the chiller cabinet reaching for a bottle of milk that I saw cartons of double cream on the shelf below. There can be no clearer indication of the changes that lockdown has bought than the fact I actually stood there prevaricating as to whether I should put some in my basket or not. I’ll admit that I didn’t prevaricate for long but it did feel strange that something I was buying more weeks than not up until only a month ago suddenly seemed illicit and a little bit naughty. I almost felt as if I had to smuggle it back into the house.

The plan of what exactly to use the cream for fell into place that night. I was sorting  through our freezer just to check what we had when I found a bag of cherries. They dated from a time last summer when we had more than we knew what to do with and now they were going to be the perfect cream accompaniment on my cake.

The third piece of the plan was the cake itself and there was only ever one recipe I was going to use. It’s  a sponge that might be a little denser than those you are used to, but in using muscovado sugar and spelt flour rather than the normal caster sugar and self raising flour it packs so much more flavour.

Ingredients

• 150g softened butter
• 80g dark muscovado sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• Grated zest of half an orange
• 3.5 tbsp milk
• 150g wholemeal spelt flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt

Method

• Pre heat the oven to gas mark 4. Grease and line two 20cm round cake tins
• Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until the mixture is pale. I used a hand held electric whisk for this.
• Stir in the eggs one at a time. Then stir in the orange zest and milk.
• In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet in three stages. After each stage stir until the mixture is just combined.
• Divide the mixture between the two tins and smooth it out.
• Bake for 20 minutes. The cakes should be risen and a golden brown colour, a skewer pressed into the centre should come out clean.
• Release the cakes from the tins and leave to cool for at least 30 minutes before you add any cream to them.

To assemble the cake I simply whipped the cream with a whisk until it was thick, you could add a little sugar but I prefer not to, and chopped the thawed cherries. I then sandwiched most of each between the two cakes and decorated the top with the rest. The result was some much needed lockdown luxury.